My first web app: helping people evaluate and improve their skills

As I said in my introduction, I’m an IT consultant who has been developing intranet web sites, primarily in SharePoint, for many years. My goal is to dive into modern web development, front-end and back-end. I’m going to learn by doing, and share everything on this blog.

The Pitch

First, of course, I need an app idea. Here’s my elevator pitch:

People generally want to improve their skills in some area. Someone might want to become a better a cook, a better programmer, or a better gardener.

My app will:

Help you evaluate your current level of expertise in a certain area

Give you tips for improvement

Track your progress as you improve, and let you share your progress with others

Experts will create the evaluations that power the app, and gain exposure in the process.

Requirements

Here’s what the app might need to do:

Allow anyone to:

Take an evaluation on a certain topic

Get tips for improvement, based on where they stand now

Re-take the evaluation later, to see how much they’ve improved

Allow experts in a given area to:

Create an evaluation on a certain topic

Share the evaluation with others

See how many people are taking their evaluation

We’ll flesh out requirements more later, but this is the gist.

In the next post, we’ll start looking at the tools necessary to create this, beginning with the front-end or user interface.